***
NEWS  ***  NEWS   ***		 ss
      •
Paup 4b8 is now installed on helix and on all alpha nodes.
 ss
      •
Mr.Bayes 1.11 is installed on helix and will soon be installed on the alpha nodes.
 ss
      •
To open an account you need first to fill in the account request form. (Note: You have to be affiliated with the Field Museum: staff, post doc, student, visitor)
 ss
      •
The HPCC computers are now accessible from outside the Museum.
An additional Account on hpcc.fieldmuseum.org is needed. See the tutorials on how to get access.
 ss
      • Some of the links on this site are not yet connected. This will be corrected soon.
 ss
      • Please send all questions concerning the helix, the cluster and this web page to hpcc@fieldmuseum.org or call Stefan Zoller at x7846

 ss
The Field Museum has established research in evolutionary biology and systematics as a major strategic area. Many systematics projects involve data sets that are too large to be adequately analyzed even by the fastest desktop PCs normally available to researchers. Some phylogenetic analyses (e.g. likelihood bootstrapping) can run for weeks on the fastest desktop computers.

This barrier has now been alleviated at the Field Museum. Thanks to a National Science Foundation Grant1), an Academic Equipment Grant2) from Sun Microsystems, and matching funds from the Museum, a high performance cluster computing system (HPCC), consisting of a Sun Enterprise Server (4 processors) and a Microway Linux cluster (six dual alpha processor compute nodes) was acquired and is now ready for use. These UNIX-based machines are available for use by all Field Museum research staff, post docs, students, and visitors.

All instructions on how to access the computers and how to run jobs is available as downloadable Adobe Acrobat files (pdf), which can be found on the tutorial page.

Here are a few good reasons to use the HPCC:
 • Free your Mac or PC from time consuming phylogenetic analyses.
 • Reduce the risk of crashes (and loss of data!) on your desktop computer.
 • Speed up your single analyses by a factor of two or more.
 • Run several analyses at the same time. Without slowing them down!
 • This boils down to faster and improved analyses of your data.
 • Important for students: learn how to use UNIX and UNIX-based programs.



1) "High-Capacity Multiprocessor Computer Server Cluster
1) for Phylogenetic Analysis of DNA Sequence Data in
1) Biological Research" awarded to Kathleen M. Pryer,
1) Shannon J. Hackett, François M. Lutzoni, Tim Krauskopf
1) and Lee A. Weigt
1) Go to the NSF webpage

2) Bioinformatics in Evolutionary Biology Studies.
2) Sun Academic Equipment Grant awarded to
2) J.E. Steinbachs and K.M. Pryer

2) Go to the Sun Microsystems Academic Equipment Grant
2) webpage or the Sun Microsystems home page